Why do you go to conferences?

To be honest with you, I go to conferences to meet people. I see old friends, meet online friends in person and meet new people. While I occasionally see a good talk, like Dries Buytaert's rules for creating a great community, I usually only go to talks to start conversations in twitter or on my blog.

Lately I've had a strong desire to turn my talks into conversations instead of lectures. That's what I did at SCALE and at the Collaboration Summit. (Losing my voice at the Collaboration Summit ensured that I had to make it a conversation!)

So today when I got an email advertising a conference's keynotes, I wondered – who goes to see the keynotes and why. And if not to see the keynotes, why do people go to conferences?

I created a survey in SurveyMonkey, and you can see the results on my blog.

Photo by dkalo.